In September, Poly welcomed Myles W. Jackson, Ph.D., Dibner Family Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Senior Faculty Fellow of the Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, to its Humanities and Social Sciences department. His research interests include molecular biology and intellectual property in Europe and the US, genetic privacy issues, and the history of 18th and 19th-century German physics.
Professor Jackson, who most recently taught at Willamette University, a liberal arts school in Salem Oregon, was drawn to Poly, in part, by the opportunity to teach science and engineering students the history as well as the social and ethical implications of their disciplines.
Currently, Professor Jackson is teaching Science and Ethics and Contemporary History and will teach Physics and Society and Biology and Society in the spring. He hopes to develop a course on the history of artificial intelligence, automata, music, and aesthetics and has already put together the “Molecular Biology and Society” lecture series, which will begin in February 2008.
Professor Jackson received his Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. He joined Willamette University in 1998 after teaching at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago.
Professor Jackson has published over 30 articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries on the history of science from the Scientific Revolution to the present. His most recent work, Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians and Instrument Markers in Nineteenth-Century Germany (MIT Press), was released in 2006. His first book, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics (MIT Press, 2000) received the Paul Bunge Prize from the German Chemical Society for the Best Work on Instrument Makers and the Hans Sauer Prize for the Best Work on the History of Invention. He has won teaching awards from Harvard, Penn, and Willamette.
Professor Jackson is currently working on a new project dealing with issues of privacy and ownership relevant to the Human Genome Project, a topic he introduces in this lecture video.